Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Round One Results

Well, it was a dramatic finish to round one of voting. At today's noon-MST close to voting, a final day push managed to send Trudeau and Pearson on to round two with 5 and 8 vote margins of victory respectively. I'll give the right a lot of credit for their "vote out Trudeau" campaign...yet once again, Joe Clark has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Here are the full results:

(1) King 1408(16) Turner 165

(2) Macdonald 1465(15) Campbell 127

(3) Trudeau 837(14) Clark 832

(4) Laurier 1180(13) Meighen 377

(5) Chretien 1066(12) Martin 343

(6) Borden 811(11) Pearson 819

(7) Mulroney 1136(10) Bennett 467

(8) St. Laurent 541(9) Diefenbaker 1063

The round two poll will open tomorrow and follow the same pattern as this week's. The matchups for round two will be King vs. Diefenbaker, Macdonald vs. Mulroney, Trudeau vs. Pearson, and Laurier vs. Chretien.

Matthew; By bad on the spelling. But do I get marks for "Diefenbaker" at the very least.

James; Basically, I felt only one vote per PC would have killed the momentum down the stretch...you'd have 1000 votes over the first two days and, like, 30 on the last day. At least this way you get some real excitement down the stretch.

Ideally, I was hoping to do it like Robert did for the Blog awards last year, but I didn't want to pay for the deluxe package so this was the best compromise I could come up with.

Interesting. I did something similar with the Election Pool, to maintain interest throughout the election by ensuring people started participating early rather than wait until the campaign played itself out to make safer predictions.

I think Sir John's immortal campaign slogan of "vote early, vote often" has triumphed here today. He should get a pass into the next round for saving Pearson and Trudeau (as a GOOD Progressive Conservative would have) :)

Matt O; If anything, I think the second vote helped the anti-Trudeau crowd. In both polls, Clark jumped out to a 50 vote lead early and then slowly lost it, once all the SDA traffic had voted. Clark droped from a 40 vote lead to a 16 vote lead on the last day of the first poll, and he droped from a 20 vote lead to a 5 vote deficit on the last day of this poll. I suspect PET would have won fairly handily if I'd kept one poll open.

Also, multiple votes favours the more dedicated voters and the anti-PET crowd was definitely more dedicated.

Toronto Tory; I said I'd do it March Madness style, so that means the brackets are fixed. So, the winner of Macdonald/Mulroney gets the winners of Pearson/PET is the semi-final, regardless of who wins the matchups.

As for predictions, Macdonald should steamroll Mulroney. I'd expect King to beat Dief, but the Conservatives could rally behind the Chief on that one. Laurier should be Chretien. Trudeau/Pearson will be very interesting...after round one, I tend to think Pearson will take it, but I think it will be a close one.

Macdonald over Mulroney is almost as easy a pick. Its an intra party match-up so partisan considerations should be at a minimum. If anything I would expect the conservatives to give it to Macdonald so as to have their best man ready to take on Trudeau or Pearson.

King v. Diefenbaker will be a closer match, but given that King got the second most votes in round one, I think the round will to WLMK.

Trudeau v. Pearson is another intra party match-up but a closer one than Macdonald/Mulroney. My guess is the conservatives will largely abstain, leaving the left to pick their favourite. My money is on Trudeau.

Why bother voting? CalgaryGrit has already decided how the contest is going to turn out, and as long as the vote doesn't go his way he will keep taking new polls until he gets the one with the results he wants.

CG, since it is clear that the poll is only valid if it goes the way you think it should, why not just close the poll after you take your vote? It would be so much simpler that way.

It always amazes me that Conservatives take online polls so seriously. What difference does it make if Trudeau wins or loses an online poll on a blog which is openly progressive and biased in favour of the Liberals?

In fact, the Tory campaign in this instance has been counter-productive. It has focused the entire debate on Trudeau and his strengths. Liberal supporters have felt compelled to voice support for a candidate that they may otherwise have been more critical towards.

Perhaps they fear a slippery slope. If Trudeau wins this poll, society will crumble into sodomy, idolatry and moral decay....

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